Orpheus in the City of the Dead
by phantomwriter05
Summary: On an ominous All Hallows Eve, a Tech-Com Ranger matches wits against two of the machines deadliest human traitors in the very heart of "The City of the Dead" as both sides fight over displaced evidence that could escalate the entire war. One-Shot. Mentions of long established John/Cameron. Happy Halloween!


_This was a lead in to a "Science of Deduction" chapter in "Poet and the Muse". But it got way too long so I cut it. But it did make a really good Halloween Terminator/TSCC Expanded Universe One-Shot. And you don't have to read "The Hanging Tree" or "Poet and the Muse" to understand it._

 _So I decided to just post it and see what happens._

* * *

Judgment Day is an easier word to toss around in the more populated areas of the world. In a split second, lives turned to ash in every figure of speech and in every literal interpretation of the English language. From the time the bombs had been dropped, millions, hooked on technology, feeding off streams and streams of easily accessed information, became localized. An outside world that came to you in pictures and videos at the touch of a finger forever amputated like a vital limb. For years afterward no one lived or thought beyond fifty miles from where they hid. The world had shrunk in a matter of minutes.

So it would seem hard to comprehend that with such destruction in the most major population centers in the entire world … that it wasn't that way in other places. Hard to understand that not every bomb that fell had covered an entire continent. Missile shields, inadequate soviet era engines, irrelevance, all of these factors had saved many lives in urban and rural populations all along the lower Mississippi and Southwest of America. But knowing what had happened to the other major cities had caused a great phobia of the concrete monsters and marvels of modern society that had once attracted so many. Overnight, thriving centers of life and commerce disappeared. All of it abandoned to fate, rather than to stay and become a burnt husk in the wake of atomic aftermath. But the missiles and death never came, but neither did the people. So it was that in time dust and ivy had come to claim what man had built.

And fear kept it that way.

Till tonight.

There was a comfort to the air that flowed like a river through the narrow spaces and dark places that set the scene. It wasn't cold, and it wasn't humid, but the air was thick and curdled in the southern Louisiana night. So smooth and soft, you felt like you could eat it. A night like tonight could make a man hungry. Make'em hungry for food, booze, to touch something soft and feminine. It energized and hypnotized, working its spell from the deep and dark foundations of a city that toted and worshiped something other than god. Most would say it was all an act, a gimmick for tourist money. But walking through the dark cobble stone, passing the empty southern mansions and ramshackled plantation houses that led to the water front, you'd know different. To look in their darkened windows and broken doors you might feel like something is watching you.

It's something old, something that had always been here. It was brought over by the snake worshipping islanders and black magic ceremonies of the African bush. This entity passes unseen in the dark corners, under the Jazz dive tables, and in the sewer tunnels. It danced below to the old horns that played the nights away, drawn to the soul in that sweet music like a honey bee with a poison sting. Enraptured by the music and the heat of passion his presence was felt in the swirling darkness of the back alleys and forgotten jazz clubs where the bodies lie and the murderer laments. He slinks back underground as the bubble gum lights claim their man, waiting for next time. But now that it's gone, now that they're all gone, he doesn't hide anymore. These streets are his. And his lonesome frustration is shown in the ivy covered railing and the cracked plaster of buildings. He wants a new drug. The night air, the atmosphere of anticipation, it was all ripe for satisfaction. From every rundown mansion and cracked standing mausoleum in the old graveyards he looks on with a gleam in his eye and twinkle in his smile.

It's about to begin.

 **Detective Stories: Black Case Book**

 _Orpheus in the City of the Dead_

It was a boisterous, boastful, and lumbering mass of muscle and feral instinct of the basest human emotions that walked the street. This hardly human monster was a terrible and ruined form of life. Constructed and mutated in the labs of cold mechanical logic. There, morality, natural law, and basic decency did not apply. In a chance to better understand the human evolution, a mechanized god deconstructed and decoded genes and in their place recreated a feral beast of the ancient world that had long since been extinct.

Standing nearly seven feet tall, the loose cobble sidewalks of the French Quarter thumped and cracked under this monster's massive jack boots. His skin was the color chalk. The rippling ape like body was covered in pink and horrific gashed scars and mutilated burns. Some were collections of lucky shots by opponents, but most were done by the talon like claws of his own fingers. The razor yellow nails matching the color and bladed sharpness of his filed teeth. Shaved smooth and supple, after so many years, there was no sign of his humanity left but for his long mat of black hair. Pulled in a pony-tail that slapped his lower back with every step, its awful stench was created by the greasing of it every night with the blood of his victims. He had the decency to wear a pair of black, stained, combat trousers. But for his upper body, his feral nature had left it unadorned but for his prizes. Looped around his waist and hulking biceps was the tied collection of red sashes from the arms of the many Tech-Com officers he had killed in battle. While around his massive neck, worn like a bejeweled ornament that signified divine right, was a necklace of human scalps. A grand prize reserved only for those of the mighty John Connor's personal circle who he had killed and feasted on the flesh. Each time donning the blood soaked slivers of black, brown, red, and blonde, brings hope that he is one day closer to the one fight the savage prayed to his mechanical god for since he tasted his first kill.

There was a look of true, unadulterated horror transfixed on the face of the girl in his arms. Her long, waist length curls of glistening black had come loose. The color of contras to her pale skin made her seem bald and cloaked in shadow. Her dress was a form fitting green silk that was trimmed with golden embroidery and seemed more at home in a Celtic fairy tale or a Renaissance Fair than these ruined settings. The wear and tear of the reality in which she had found herself was shown in the torn fabric and post-apocalyptic dirt that stained the gown and ethereal beauty that wore it.

This time period, this setting, this place … it was all wrong. She didn't know where she was, didn't know what this brute was. Everything was confused, a blur that didn't match. This place, this nightmare, was all new to her. The buildings, the imagery, the figures on the tapestries and signs above the shops, they were strange and frightening. She was overwhelmed and out of sorts, and only the greatest fear of what would become of her in her unconscious state, kept the girl from fainting again. All she wanted to do was wake up from this slumber of damnation that she had been bewitched into. The girl's mind was reeling, her conscious filled with sudden guilt and terror. The only thing she could think of when looking into the monster's face was that her sins had led her into the darkest depths of hell itself.

Her memories where blurred now, the thoughts of home brought her an unquenchable sadness. Fore on this day she was to be married. A shiny furred horse of white, bearing a velvet cloaked princess in her precession of knights toward the castle that would have been her home. She had never felt happier, never felt more complete. Often time's people would quibble about their rightful places in this world, but somehow she had found her safety and security in the political alliances that forged her life and that of her family. Softness was on her mischievous smirk that touched red lips when the rain had let up. She had drawn down her hooded cowl to look into the dark morning on the road. Then all she could remember was two glowing eyes, like a lustful dragon, beaming red from the darkness of the forest. Her captor seemed a man at first, naked as the day he was born. The captain of her father's household guard had offered him clothing in good Christian charity. But in one foul twist, the mightiest tourney rider in the land was felled with a broken neck. She had watched in horror as this man killed each rider with his bare hands. Till long it was just her brother and herself, kneeling over their slain father, impaled through the chest by a lone fist. In a rage her brother had rushed at him, with sword in hand. She tried to stay his rage, begged him to come away with her on her horse. But her begging was not half as loud as her scream became after his blade had opened their ambusher's belly. It was like some horrible, demonic reversal, seeing the armor under a man's skin. Yet the murderer did not flinch and did not say a word before he grabbed her brother by his throat. He had tried to call to her, order her to flee, but he never got a chance before he suffered the fate of every man that had ridden with the princess that day. She fell from her horse and into silent shock as she watched the first of many monsters in her life stride toward her. She prayed to god to forgive her, to look after her husband waiting for a beautiful bride that would never come. Then there was nothing but blue and purple lightening as she was dragged away from her dead father and brother. She'd never forget the sight of their lifeless corpses burning, roasted in their own armor as her world disappeared in a flash of light.

Now she had been here for a day, not a soul to answer for where this Kingdom lain, what this place was, and why she was taken from the most enchanted day of her life? To live and die in this filth, in this land with no name save for the sorrowful adjectives in which often came to her frightened mind. The princess would wish for such blissful death, if she wasn't so sure she had not died upon that morning road with her father and most beloved brother. So now after being captured by this brute, who had found her amongst the ruins and tears in her eyes, she had no choice but to submit to whatever torment Lucifer's demons had lain for her arrival.

It wasn't a long journey before she saw a new silhouette leaning against a streetlamp of chipped black paint. This new enemy seemed tall and skinny, lean in muscle, but sinister in a way that the girl could feel in her bones before she even laid eyes on him.

It was an old evil that surrounded this man. A darkness that fed off the energy and history that lie underneath these cobbled streets and soaked into every inch of the plantations, standing graveyards, and very foundations of this City of the Dead. He fed off the old emotions embedded and steaming from the places and buildings of ancient battle and atrocity. From the old cratered bombardment of Union gun boats on the river, to the demolished foundations of the places that once housed the slave auctions. All of the horror of the dead children eating federal cannon, to the fear of separating mother and child, and the undignified sale of their own inhuman treatment. It all swirled about the old places like Poltergeists stirring once again. The state of this ruined, machine run, world that devolved back into these practices calling them forth. And in this demon's playground, this man, this phantom who smoked his big fat cigar, he fed off all of it. In his own corner of this ruined hell he smiled and played with these tormented spirits and their sorrow as if he were the Lord of Bald Mountain himself. And when the girl saw his Chernabog grin ... it hummed in the darkness with yellow neon.

"What's this?" He asked in sudden annoyance as if the monster had laid a dead mouse at his feet, like some mange ridden dog, hoping to curry favor.

"I found her … crying and bleeding where the 101 was supposed to be." There was something terrifyingly brutal about the way the monster spoke. It was a mixture of raw emotions and hyper-aggression. It was millions of years of unbridled emotional and primal instinct repressed by modern humans and their ancestors. And now all of it coursed through the pale ape like liquid fire in his veins.

The man gave a long draft of his cigar, embers lighting dark eyes that reflected shadowed figures and otherworldly shapes that were not in front of him. When he blew out there was an easy, thick, puff of a donut sized smoke ring that smacked the girl's face. As she coughed violently, the man shifted his position in agitation with the monster.

"You were sent to pick up a machine, a chip at the least, not a crying girl. I didn't come here for my time to be wasted by a slobbering simpleton, who only can process how to do two things at a time!" He snapped. Stepping forward, he snatched the girl out of the monster's arms. When he came out of the shadows there was a taken aback nature from inside the girl that she could not stifle.

The tall, slender man was shirtless, covered by a preacher's coat. His naked, ashy upper body of slender sinewy muscles had a deep and horrific scar that ran pelvis to collar bone. Around his neck was a scorched and rough-spun Hangman's noose that was worn like a tight necklace. Its chaffing material only inflamed the even more gruesome scar on his throat. It was a paper thin marking swollen and ugly that came from a throwing weapon that was spinning and bladed that had just missed his jugular. His black top hat had a crow's feather stuck inside, and his face was indiscernible with the black and white skull of a Thugee shaman painted on thickly. Between his long and delicate fingers he spun a golden rod with a crystal like jewel at the knobbed end. Its flashing light threw illumination in the brittle windows of the abandoned dives and restaurants around them.

"You can think about your stomach after you've finished the job!" He growled at the large ogre who looked enraged.

Outraged at the stealing of his beautiful prize, the monster raised himself to full height and came chest to chest with the skull faced Thugee. "I don't take orders from you! I'm here, because you need me, not because I need you, little man." He snarled in anticipation for violence. "If I were to take a bite out of that pencil neck, no one at _Zeira Corp._ Tower would miss you, and your illusions." He chomped his fangs so near the man's nose, that saliva droplets stained his black face paint.

With the Princess's arm in one hand, he lifted the glowing staff in the other right between the monster's eyes. Two slit pupils focused on the crystal, slowly becoming disarmed and stiff as the lights arranged pattern.

"With a breath of my powder, I can make you relive your worst nightmares over and over again. In just a heart beat's glance into the staff, I can have you castrating your genitals with those claws of yours and sit down at a table to have both pillar and stones for a final meal, all with just a word." He threatened, keeping the mindless beast transfixed on the electrical glimmer within the crystal. "Test me, I dare you." The Thugee priest warned before he lowered his staff.

There was something elegant, educated, and fluid in the way the skull painted man talked. Everything he did was smooth, and yet there was a perversion, a sickness and disease to it. Like the suppleness of decaying flesh. In his voice was the element to hypnotize, like the sleepiness of a quiet night. And yet hidden underneath, in every spoken word, was the frightening tomes of the elements that controlled and plagued the subconscious with the most vividly frightening images that guilt, memory, and anxiety created in the dead of night. His voice alone built a pressure cooker of anxiety in the mind, which ticked like a bomb with every word he spoke to you. Teasing, prodding, and cultivating the breakdown, waiting for the release of every fear to break free from the fringes of your mind and come spilling out.

For a long moment the chalk white monstrosity was still transfixed on the spot where the electric crystal had been. But when he broke out of it he looked positively the picture of brutal, passionate, and mutilating murder. He was like an unchained, unguarded, and unleashed wild animal. But for all his fearsome features, and gnashing of teeth, the skull faced priest motioned his petulant partner to go back in search of the missing machine. With a snap of teeth, like a punished attack dog, he stomped back to where he was going. He snarled like a caged predator new to his imprisonment.

The man watched it go with disgust. " _John Henry's_ experiments …" He sniffed with condensation as he shook his head. The girl was ready to run, to push off and flee. She might not have escaped the monster, but this skull faced Saracen did not seem like the athletic type. But just as the slender muscles of her milky legs tightened in anticipation, she felt a thumb begin to rub on her arm. Suddenly she was pulled against the Thugee who seemed to be fascinated by her gown of all things. She moaned in protest when his fingers slid down her stomach to feel the material.

"Where did you get this dress?" He asked seriously. He ate her silence and a look of hatred for a semblance of how she felt about his question. But her defiance lasted only so long as he began lifting his staff to eye level.

"It's mine." She replied.

It seemed that her accent became more of a point of interest than even her dress. Suddenly the entirety of her became a point of interest to the Thugee Priest. The girl's accent, her dress, her eye color, all was uncommon variables in the ruins of New Orleans. From an anthropological standpoint to the mad genius, she shouldn't be here at all.

"Moron!" He suddenly called to the beast. "Come back here!" He ordered. The sudden glimmer in the Voodoo man's eyes made the Princess even more frightened than she had been. Before, she was a passing fancy to two villains, two monsters. Now she was the focus of whatever evils had summoned them tonight.

"What do you want?!" The beast snarled in anger.

"Where did you find this girl?" He asked in excited anxiety. The raven haired princess thought that her skull faced captor might start to rub his hands together, like a fly.

"She's mine!" the beast snarled.

To the declarative, the Thugee raised his cane, and struck the monster across the face. The ogre looked completely shocked by the violence and suddenly incensed by the action as blood trickled down his lips.

"Where did you find her?!" He raised his cane in front of the monster's eyes just as he looked ready to lash out with his yellow talons. Suddenly the chalk white ape could do nothing but remain still. His primitive brain waves more easily controlled than most.

Slit eyes lost, remained still and drained. "At the rally point with the T-101." He replied obediently.

"Was there signs of Displacement?" He asked. His excitement level rose with each question.

"Yes …"

"And you found no sign of it anywhere, just this girl?" He looked nearly ready to burst.

"Yes …"

Suddenly the Thugee turned on his captive. He pressed the rod to her throat threateningly. "Answer wisely, my lady, or you might just spend a night with him." He motioned to the still frozen monster. To the prospect she nodded fiercely.

"Have you seen a naked man?" He asked.

She nodded.

"Did he bring you here?"

She nodded again.

"What happened to him?"

The princess began to shake. "My brother, felled him with his blade, and when his sorcery enraptured us, he was burned away in the lightening of his own magic." She replied in trauma of how she ended up here.

Her answer was met with a glowing grin of neon teeth. "Of course, the mechanized fool's flesh was exposed … The bio-field must have torn him to shreds." He spoke to himself as an excited child might at the prospect of a new and exciting discovery. "But you …" He turned back to her. "You're human aren't you?" He asked rhetorically.

"What does that mean?" She asked.

"It means that it's real and that it works … after all these years, it actually exists."

"What does?"

"Time Travel, Your Grace."

He finally rubbed his hands together as she anticipated. Quickly, the priest turned toward the monster that still seemed sluggish and petulant to have his newest victim taken from him. "We haven't the time to waste." The skull faced man ordered. "Von Rothbart and John Henry are going to want every precious piece of her perfect flesh for their time displacement experiments." The Thugee announced with a new vigor in his step.

The monster reached out for the girl, who quickly slid away from him. She let out a pained scream when razor sharp nails ripped at the long sleeve of her Arthurian gown. A crystal pommel slapped the hand away from the girl.

"Not you!" The skull faced man replied angrily. "Bring up the 600s. At least I know the rubber skins will get her there in one piece, and not with one of your deformed bastards inside her belly." He pointed his staff behind the monster.

Small dark eyes filled with nothing but hatred turned toward the painted man silently. "What?" He snarled. At the confusion, both suddenly, and in unison, looked behind themselves to see no figures of machines waiting for command. With an outraged scoff, the Thugee stormed a few feet and stopped.

"I dispatched two T-600s with you to find and bring the 101 back! What happened to them you slobbering _Shabdkosh_?!" He yelled in disbelief at the fanged creature. But there was no response. There was nothing but a narrowing of the beast's dark eyes in sudden animal instincts that alerted them all that something wasn't right …

They were being watched.

There was a loud and sharp clack that hit the cobble stones with force. All three figures standing in the middle of the street turned to find a rounded shape rolling toward them. When it stopped, the girl looked down and saw an abnormally large head made of metal. Greasy, slickened, and filthy, the machine skull was missing a glass red eye and several of its porcelain teeth. Peach colored latex was scrunched and ripped grotesquely over the face, looking like it was fit with a poor Halloween mask. Even the dirty mop of sandy curls on its head looked like a bad wig from a cheap store on Hollywood Boulevard.

" _I can't decide who the bigger idiot is? Is it the unwashed retard that looks like Dracula's penis? Or the gullible Kali fucker, who left Danny Down Syndrome in charge of daddy's expensive machinery?"_

A mocking voice echoed over the solemn quiet of Bourbon Street. It taunted the princess's two captors from an unseen and unknown place somewhere within the ruined shadows of the historical district. To the insults the animal growled low in recognition of the voice. The other drew an ordinate revolver with Hindi markings etched on the Victorian barrel. The Thugee Priest said only one thing that the Princess did not understand the meaning of.

"Mouse Detective …"

Primal instinct in the DNA of humanities earliest hunters were used to great effect in finding even the slightest movement amongst the balconies and roofs above them. With a snap of his head, the man-ape roared with a primal fury at a shadowy figure perched on the balcony of an old tavern. Following his fellow Gray's frightening war cry, the Kali worshipper whipped around and fired three shots at the silhouette.

CLUNCK

CLUNCK

CLUNCK

The black haired princess's skin prickled and her green eyes went wide in fear at her first ever exposer to the sound of a firearm's discharge. She flinched and covered her ears, watching as the shadowed figure's appearance was lit for only a split second in sparks as he ran across the balcony. Their opponent was cowled and wore a field jacket made of black material. Agile and athletic, there was an adept ease from his free form running from one building to the next in his avoidance of the Thugee's aim. An obvious lifetime's worth of climbing, leaping, and running through ruined cities that had become a youth's playground after the end of the world. They watched as bullet bent railing, splintered rotted wood, and punctured ivy covered neon signs. But never found their intended mark.

In the distance, came a strange and whirling sound that droned over the empty street. It was like nothing the girl had heard before. It sounded loud and large from the roaring that came ever closer. In her belief of being in the darkest circles of Hell, she could almost imagine anything coming for all of them. But somehow a dragon came to mind the closer the sound came. Golden eyed, golden scaled, and utterly without mercy. For a hearts beat she thought herself right as a silhouette came overhead, skimming roof tops. But she couldn't have been more surprised if it really was a dragon. For all of the princess's life she had scoffed at machinery, and yet never had she thought that she'd see the day that it could take to the air and fly as a bird does.

Diving on them was a refurbished HU-1 Iroquois gunship. The repaired Huey Helicopter still had the olive drab paint from Vietnam and the bullet holes from its service in Laos. From its weapon arms twin machine guns lit up the night as it went on a strafing run right in the heart of New Orleans's French Quarter. The warped sounds of high impact trailed down the cobbled street toward the three figures standing in the way. Completely startled and beyond terrified at the loud noises of weapons centuries younger than her, she lifted her regal gown and fled for cover in the nick of time. Turning her head in a whip of a curtain of black curls, she saw the trail engulf the large chalk monster who roared in pain, while the Thugee fell to the ground, gripping his leg. Her eyes rose to the sky and watched the Helicopter streak away into the horizon, and disappear beyond the roof tops.

The beast growled picking up the spent ammo that had struck him. Running up his pale torso and over his shoulders were horrific yellow and black bruises. "Rubber Bullets!" He squeezed the round between thumb and forefinger in disgust. But then, as if he had picked up a venomous serpent, the bullet began to hiss. Suddenly, all of the rounds began hissing, as if the monster had wandered into a viper's nest that had become agitated by his presence. A thick stream of gas began to leak out from their tails. Soon the joint coagulation of the noxious cloud of chemicals began to obscure the area in a thick fog. Tears began to form as a thick metallic taste watered the princess's mouth, and irritated her eyes. She covered her face with her silken sleeve as the light breeze began to spread the clouded cover amongst the ruins.

Fleeing, she hid under a balcony and amongst rusted metal tables of a café. She watched the monster wandered through the foul mist in a daze of anger and rage. It swept its razor nails at the air, crying in bloody murder.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she saw above the hazy ceiling of the odorous fog, a figure was standing on a roof across the narrow street from them. With a surprised hitch, she watched it leap from the top of the building. With horror she saw it summersault in mid-air to build momentum. Then, it began to free fall toward the pavement. But before the figure reached even the second story of the building, he caught onto the bottom of a banner that was hung from one side of the street to the other, announcing a Mardi Gras festival event. With a loud ripping noise that echoed through the fogged street, he swung feet first at the half blinded beast. With a painful smack the soles of his knee high supple boots crashed into the face of the monster. There was an explosion of blood that erupted from nasal cavity and mouth upon contact. With the force of the fall combined with the momentum of his swing, the fighter hit the monster with enough power to send it off its feet and go flying through a plate glass window of a restaurant.

Landing in the obscurity of the fog in crouch was a lean figure. The top of his head, his eyes, and nose were covered by a black vigilante head sash. The eye slits cut into the old _female scarf_ were protected by a pair of goggles. This challenger's black combat trousers had a single crimson stripe that ran down the outer seams, and buckled across his chest was a worn leather utility bandoleer. Covered over it all was a matching black, double breasted uniformed field jacket with red stitching. On his breast pocket was a small pin with a golden "R" outlined in black on a red field, and a single silver eagle's wing sewn to the sleeve.

She had never seen anyone like the men that surrounded her. Each one of them had a different, strange, look and clothing, but out of all of them the young man in front of her seemed the least foul of the three. Her shining and frightened eyes were drawn to him in wonder and amazement. It was not for his acrobatic feat, but for the first time since she had come to this awful place she had found not some frightening creature or demon of hell. He might have dressed like a bandit, but there was something more to him. A feeling unfamiliar to her shot through her chest like a hunter's arrow and struck her in the heart. The princess couldn't explain, or know what it was that overcame her when she looked to him. But she knew that in the moment of need she had never felt more attached to one person in all of her short sixteen years.

It was as if he could sense her stare. Call it a father's relentless training, a six sense, experience in urban warfare. But the masked youth knew just how to find the Arthurian princess. With a snap of his head he saw her behind the café table. But before he could process her regal appearance, suddenly his muscles tightened in alert, and the vibrations of the air changed. He could hear the tapping of asphalt on the street, the dragging of a lame leg. By the time the Thugee had penetrated the fog with a slash of his rod, the vigilante was already turned to face his opponent. With the gnashing of teeth, the priest, tormented in pain, pointed his ancient British revolver at the youth.

CRACK!

CRACK!

CRACK!

Before he even put pressure on the trigger the "Mouse Detective" was already moving out of the way. It was almost as if he could read the Thugee's mind before he even knew where he was going to fire. Jerking his head to the side from a crouch position, the first shot whizzed over the youth's shoulder. Keeping a low sense of gravity, the second shot ricocheted off the asphalt when the vigilante gave a defensive roll out of the way. The skull faced rogue gave chase as the masked man sprinted toward a collection of rusted and overturned trashcans that lay half-hazardly on the cobble stone sidewalk. Reaching down mid-sprint, the younger grabbed a trash bag filled with black ooze of a decade's worth of waste that had lain untouched and decayed. With a twisting heave, he flung it at the skull faced priest. The timing couldn't have been better as the slime filled bag of awful stench caused the final round in the chamber to go wide, the sound of a voodoo shop's window shattering to mark where it struck.

Now covered in black tar of the worst bayou germination, the already angry man charged forward with cane in hand. The vigilante took a fluid martial art's stance as the mad scientist came after him. With a whip of air the back end of the golden rod slashed for the masked face. The youth jerked backward catching nothing but the violent swirl of air on his chest. Pivoting back on a back leg, his counter strike was two successive kicks, one toward the skull faced man's head and the other toward his solar plexus. Each was parried with the rod, meeting the elegant, _dancer_ like, fighter's counters with clouds of dust with each impact. Using his prized weapon like a saber, showing the skill of a captain of the Cambridge fencing team, the Thugee swung his rod back toward the rib area of his young opponent. Though his blow struck home, the youth took the hit, using his arm to trap the Priest's prized offensive and defensive weapon to his side. However before he could press his new advantage, the Gray whipped him across the face with his ordinate pistol. The blow was sudden enough to knock the youth off his feet, causing him to roll backward in retreat.

From her hiding place amongst the tables of the café, the princess watched absolute dumbfounded. All of her life she knew of combat, watched from her window or from her chair as she cheered her brother and cousins in the yard practicing sword play or at her grandfather's tourneys. But she was centuries removed from the hack and slash of armored men on a European battlefield. Never before had she seen the lightning fast barrage of the martial arts battle between the skull faced Saracen and the young black masked bandit. The ebbs, flows, and anticipation in combat also spoke to the girl that this was not the first encounter that these two men have had with one another in battle.

A small trickle of blood trailed down the corner of the youth's mouth, a he reasserted himself for another defensive campaign as the villain in oriental priest's clothing approached aggressively. This time the young fighter's eyes were moving and calculating under their ocular protection. He was quick, almost prophetic, in his fluid and sleek slide to the right as the skull faced Thugee lunged forward with a stab meant for the youth's midsection. In his aggression the over lunge of the fencing move opened up his wounded leg. The youth didn't hesitate to strike his opponent with a punch of compressed energy. Feeling as if his hobbled leg had been struck with a workmen's hammer, the Thugee let out a roar of pain. Half in rage and half in desperation he took an angry high backhanded swing at the vigilante. But the youth again, flowing like water, got lower than the older Indian man could swing. The echo of the combination of high energy punches echoed the like the slamming of raw meat in a freezer. Starting in the rib area, the youth laid one devastating strike after another, working around his crippled opponent. Moving from ribs, to kidney, to back, to other kidney, and left ribs. He finished his circle of punches with a text book Wing Chun punch right in the Thugee's jaw, fracturing it.

All it took was one mistake and the highly trained fighter had the mostly intellectual titan in the throes of physical defeat. Repeatedly falling to a knee, the mad scientist retreated from the now physical superior younger man. He held his glowing jewel toward the youth as if to keep him at bay. Blood gushed from his damaged mouth, as he wheezed with broken ribs, bruised kidneys, and no air in his lungs. As he backed away he quickly began reloading his revolver with his last bullet. He calculated that he had at least one shot to hit the vigilante, before he was fell upon. But just as the youth was poised to make his final evasive approach, something violent struck the priest in the back of the head.

Whether the Thugee would be able to hit the young man would only be up to speculation, as the princess stood behind the fallen figure of nightmares. In her pale hand was cobbled brick that she had pulled out from under a café table. Her breath was short and her lovely eyes were wild as she looked down at her handy work. There was something cathartic in the sudden violent action. After all the trauma of the past day wondering these ruins, mourning the loss of her family, while traveling this city of the dead. To finally take back the agency that had been robbed of her by fate was something that couldn't be replaced. She had felt so angry, so filled with rage at the hopelessness of the situation she was thrown to. She had felt something snap inside her, to see the fighting, to see the young vigilante get struck, she was driven into compulsion to do something, despite generations of breeding, and a life told that combat was no place for lady. But she just couldn't let another person trying to save her fall. She had to do something and so something she did.

So caught up with her own thoughts she did not see the young man approach her cautiously. She didn't move her gaze till he was standing over the crumpled body with her. She looked up and was poised to strike out at him with her brick till she saw that he held his hand out to her helpfully.

"It's okay …" His voice was soft and caring, captured by her appearance. When she kept her defensive posture, he nodded. "It's going to be okay, here, look." the youth dipped his head and with his other hand he lifted up his goggles. When he stood straight again she noticed sharp emerald eyes that peaked through the cut eye slits in his dark head scarf. After all she had been through, all the loss, and sorrow, her eyes glassed over suddenly. Seeing something familiar, something human for the first time since she had first been abandoned to these cold, desolate remains of some dead civilization whose carcass was feasted upon by monsters of pale flesh and metal, like maggots.

Then the two youths locked eyes. For the rest of his life, even in his dreams, the young man would never forget the way the moonlight glimmered off her ivory skin, the ethereal shimmer in her curls, the smooth ripples of her silken emerald gown, and the look of enchantment in her green eyes. The young Hero never had nor ever will again see a rare beauty such as her in all of his life.

Enchanted by one another he held his hand out to the beautiful princess one more time. "Come with me if you want to live." He exclaimed quietly motioning her to his hand. The girl looked down and then back to the very human eyes of her hero.

Then quietly she laid the cobbled brick in his outstretched hand.

There was a long pause as the young man at the item. "Huh …" He cleared his throat. "I wasn't expecting that …" He quirked his eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure this didn't happen to anyone else …" He muttered disappointedly studying his brick.

" _Ghost Rider 2-0, This is Halo 4. Be advised, be advised we have fast movers inbound about to level the City of the Dead, ETA five minutes. Get your ass moving or your about to be a permanent resident!"_

The princess flinched at the disembodied voice that was echoing from somewhere on her savior's body. With a sobering shake of his head, the young man tossed the brick on the Thugee's unconscious body. He didn't take his sharp green eyes off the girl, but he lifted his wrist to his mouth.

"This is Ghost Rider 2-0, acknowledged, heading to extraction point at St. Louis number one."

When he was done talking to the phantom voice, he hooked his left foot on the Thugee's golden bejeweled rod and popped it up. Catching the trophy, the young man grabbed the girl's hand and pulled her with him. "Come on!" He ordered at a run.

Hand and hand both teens began sprinting down the street, the girl lifting her silken skirts to keep up with the desperate pace of the vigilante. She wasn't sure what was going on but she could feel in her belly that something was about to happen to this place that she did not want to stay for. Together they rushed to the edge of the obscuring cloud of chemicals that was already starting to dim. But suddenly as the tears began to dry and the metallic taste in her mouth was going away the masked man skidded to a halt.

There was no light down the darkened street of vine and ivy roped street lamps and abandoned dives. Just strange shadows in the looming skeletons of history reflected and ghosted all along the narrow paths of the French Quarter. But when she looking harder, she noticed large looming shadows as tall as the ancient buildings they were cast against. Four to a breast, in perfect formations, dark figures moved in slow mechanized step toward them. Like the Roman legionaries of antiquity. Suddenly, the same cold fear gripped her as the day in the forest when all at once dozens of pairs of red glowing eyes lit the path as they marched down the street. Just one of these metal beasts had taken everything from her in an instant, Friends, Family, childhood staples, it was hard to imagine dozens of their kind, and yet the glowing red eyes paced ever closer, all of them intent on taking her again.

"Uhhh …!" The young man made an indecisive noise of shifting gears. The princess's eyes were wide with fear the longer they stood static. She was tugging on her hero's arm as the shadowed nightmares came closer and closer. But instead of fleeing the other way, her rescuer tossed her the skull faced man's cane. She watched as he reached inside one of his bandoleer's pouches and extracted a metal ball with a glowing red button at its pole. Pressing the button, he threw the ball as an outfielder trying to make a play at home plate.

Her confusion was only matched by her heart sinking as the strange device went far off the mark she was hoping. With three sharp clicks on cobble stone it landed well in front of the oncoming column. She watched it roll till it tapped against a support pillar on an abandoned restaurant.

"All that and you missed, You Dolt!" Her royal entitlement screeched out in her flabbergasted accented voice.

The youth whirled on her and was about to say something but instead grabbed her up in a shielding hug and tackled her to the floor. There was a loud explosion that rippled through the narrow street. The noise and force of the grenade caused brittle glass to shatter and the sound waves to travel miles through the silent, abandoned city. The girl covered her ears as she peaked from underneath her peer. The whole building start to crumble without its columns of support. With a loud rush of thunderous noise the entire structure began to slide into the street in a cloud of white sediment and ancient brick. Without a time to react the advancing formation of machines were suddenly caught up in the landslide of collapsing building. Like a title wave of a tsunami, debris rushed over and fell on the formation burying them under concrete, rebar, and brick.

The only sign in the now ruined street that there had been a legion of killing machines was a single metal skull that popped out of the cloud. It clanked and skidded with sparks till it rolled right to eye level with the princess. For the first time she saw what had always stayed in the shadows. It was like a human skull, only mechanized, and made of metal. It was tongueless, with an ever present rictus grin of ceramic beige teeth. She had never seen anything more frightening or twisted in her entire sheltered life. She watched its red glowing eyes blink away to darkness as her rescuer got back to his feet. When she felt untethered she immediately crawled away from the metal skull as fast as she could. Her polished voice was wheezy and panicked as she scrambled away from the head.

Her bust was heaving against the corset and tight silken material as she leaned back in terror of the true face of her kidnappers. She flinched when something came into her eye line. A gauntleted hand offered a way back to her feet.

"Come on, Professor …" He jabbed sarcastically with a smug smirk on his face. "This way up …" He motioned to his hand. For the life of her she couldn't understand the devil-may-care cocksureness of the boy, especially at times like this. She was frightened out of her mind and yet there was a sense of cold blooded ease in danger that didn't faze her rescuer. A part of her felt that these last second rescues and just in the nick of time situations was what a man like him was used too and raised in. All of which, including the grin, made her feel just the tiniest sense of hope that there was a way out of this.

She gave him a pretentious frown at the hand and instead placed the mind control staff in his hand. He glared at her as she found her own way back to her feet.

"You know, it wouldn't kill you to take it when offered." He sneered at her.

She rolled her eyes. "From you? It just might." She snipped at him.

His response was not expected, but much appreciated. Instead of outrage there was just a touch of amusement and affinity for her spoiled attitude. There was a relief that she had some fight in her, and that he wasn't going to have to carry her for the entire duration of their scrape.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her with him as they turned the corner.

The alleyway they sprinted through was filled with an impenetrable darkness of decay, obscurity, and unseen objects. She felt the splash of foul smelling water splash her bare, milky, legs and stain her silken train as they ran. Once again the vigilante spoke into his wrist.

"Halo 4, this is Ghost Rider 2-0, a platoon of rubber skins cut off our extraction point. Repeat, St. Louis number one is cut off. We're gonna have to do something drastic here!"

" _How drastic?"_

"Sky-Hook, drastic!"

" _Sky … Sky-Hook? Boy are you crazy?!"_

"Don't ask stupid questions at a time like this!"

They had emerged from the alley into another narrow street for only several paces before a table came flying through a window. Pivoting back with trained reflexes, the vigilante tackled the princess to the ground just in time to feel the strong wind of the large object slashing through the air above them.

The young man looked down at the girl. "You are drifting dangerously into, "Not worth it, territory." You know that 'Game of Thrones'?" He breathed in disbelief at the angry hornet's nest her mere presence kicked up. She didn't know what that meant but it was enough to fit him with an annoyed glare.

When they got to their feet, he pushed her hard into his back. From over his shoulder she saw a tall, massive, figure looming in the shadows of the restaurant. When it came out of the darkness, she flinched at the chalk white monster covered in mutilating scars, and in its own blood. Her legs went weak and all she felt like doing was running as fast as she could when the monster's primal, rage filled eyes fell on the two teenagers. To see the pale ape's body, heaving in anger, with a broken nose, a necklace of leathery human scalps and red sashes was akin to coming against a starving tiger in the wilds without a gun.

However her hero didn't share the same feeling of fear.

"Look at this, shit!" He chastised motioning his head to the tossed table that had ruined an antique storefront window. "This is why we can't have nice things, you dumb ape!" He mocked with rancor at the large beast of primal instinct grown and savaged in a machine's laboratories. The fearless, insolent tone, drove the monster into a deeper sense of violence that nearly blinded it to all else that moved.

Fighting this vigilante was the closest thing he had ever gotten to the one great battle he was created for. He had slain many of John Connor's friends, tasted their flesh, and adorned himself with their remains. But this fight was more important than any had ever fought before for he knew who the "Mouse Detective" was and what he was to the great Messiah. While for the teen, he had been waiting for this moment as well. Every piece of hair and every red Resistance sash tied around the monster's waist and wrapped around his hulking biceps was a name and a face that the youth had known. Mothers, Fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, and husbands … they were somebody to somebody. Not just friends, not just family, they were human beings. And there was no greater indignity than the fate that had befallen them. For their remains to be worn like prizes on the neck and stinking body of this savage.

To break the tension the young man slammed the mind controlling rod against the floor. There was a shattering noise the pierced the empty street. The princess frowned in confusion at the action, watching the now popping and fizzing wires that were now spilling out of the razor sharp glass.

"Get back!" He pushed back against the girl's stomach as the monster began to pull at a bolted down café table. She slowly backed away as the rusted and welded bolts of the black metal table were ripped from the cobble stone. She drifted away quickly as the monster gave a primal roar as he lifted the heavy metal table over his head. Turing alertly she watched young man began twirling the cane in hand trying to build momentum. Her heart leapt to her throat as the hero rushed the monster, moving at an odd angle.

"Connor!" The large hulk roared as he flung the table at the boy.

If the youth had come at the monster straight forward there might not have been escape. But at the angle he calculated in approach, the hulking savage would have to twist while tossing the iron table, causing it to take a trajectory that was higher than it wanted. Timing it just at the right moment, the youth took an evasive roll right under the hundreds of pounds of rusting iron and chipped black paint.

Rolling to a knee, the vigilante jerked his arm across his face. There was a mechanical buzz that came from under his sleeve. With a sharp scrape of metal, two razor throwing weapons in the shape of the four pointed North Star sprang between his fingers. With a backhanded throw, he sent the throwing stars flying with a distinctive deadly song cutting through the air. The monster countered by sweeping his forearm across defensively. There was a sickening noise of metal impacting on thick meat as each throwing star lined the savage's forearm. Though immense pain ran through the beast, it gave an imposing snarl at the conscious action in attempting to intimidate the youth. That the vigilante and his partner's toys would not help him in a man's battle. But the vigilante was unfazed as if he was playing chess against a small child. It never occurred to the monster that the weapons that John Connor designed was not meant to fight flesh and blood …

It was designed to fight machines.

Suddenly, both throwing stars imbedded in the monster's forearm, began to glow blue in the center. The foul stench of frying meat filled the small deadly space between opponents as the charge of hundreds of volts of electricity surged in flashing webs over the beast. Just one North Star had enough power to send a T-800 into a one hundred and twenty second stand by. Two was enough to fry two out of three of a T-888's processors. Tightened to convulsion of massive primal muscle groups left the savage in a standing paralysis. Arms open, the pained roared with echoes through the empty New Orleans streets. The sound of running double gripped souls on asphalt to cobble stone closed the distance between opponents, a blur of a twirling golden staff building momentum. With an aggressive leap the young hero vaulted into the air with jagged rod in hand. Using it like a spear, the leaping masked figure lanced the massive chalk white beast in the heart with the broken shards. The force of the impact drove the monster into the cobble stone back first.

With a splash of bayou runoff, the beast and hero slid on the muck of the wet ruins. Now more volts of electricity stormed and crackled through the monster's body as the exposed wires mingled in the wound. All the energy and heat conducted from the puddle and blood rippled through the Kelvin scales till a spark caught and turned to flame on the chalky skin. Seeing the danger, the vigilante cruelly broke off the staff and backed away as a small flame caught to a brush fire. The layers of filth that the beast had covered himself with daily was now his undoing as all the grease went up faster than it could be put out.

There was something horrific about watching anything and anyone burn alive. The hot red and orange flames reflected in sharp, angry, emerald eyes as he heard the monster roar and scream as he became engulfed in flames. He did not move to assist as it got to its feet and began to run down the street. The human thing to have done was to put the beast out of its misery. But then he thought of all the friends lost, all the horrible things this savaged had done. He remembered the stealing and devouring of tunnel children, the kidnaping and raping of women, and mutilating their corpses when it was done. It was all these things that caused the young man to only watch the flaming figure running through the streets in agonizing torment. It didn't feel like betraying his duties as a human being to watch the horrific scene.

It felt like justice.

"It's over, Mouse Detective!"

With another scrape of metal, a throwing star was produced into his hand as the young man whirled defensively at the familiar voice. He was ready to throw, but paused.

Behind him the Thugee priest was missing his bowler hat, revealing a bald head burnt by the Indian sun and bleeding from a brick's blow. In the skull faced man's clutches was the princess, one hand covered the girls mouth while the other held a green broken beer bottle to her supple pale throat. Frightened and frustrated. Tears ran down her milky cheeks as she sobbed and struggled against her captive's grip.

With a narrow of emerald eyes, the young man lowered his throwing arm. Twirling the throwing star between his fingers he reloaded the contraption under sleeve. But he never took his gaze off the oldest of the human traitors.

"The Resistance must be spread pretty thin, if Connor is sending his little robin out alone for Recovery and Rescue missions."

There was a snort breath of mirth from the vigilante. "You ever stop to consider that maybe you're just past your prime, old man? That just maybe your John Henry approved shit-for-brain schemes have just become one man jobs? I mean booby trapping tunnels with Azul Nocturne air saw mines, death traps, and night children zombies … that crap went out of style when I was twelve." He pointed out with the rancor of condensation. "Have you ever considered that maybe it's an insult to my intelligence that I have to deal with your mid-life crisis while the real action is out there fighting the real war against the machines?" he complained. "You know it could've saved me a lot of trouble if Mom had just cut an inch deeper." He motioned to his neck, staring at the gruesome, increasingly reddening, scar that ran across the Thugee's neck under noose from their first encounter many years ago before Judgment Day.

To a man who considered himself at all times the smartest person in the room, the insinuation by the teenager that he was past his prime cut deep. For years and years he had been the terror of Post-Apocalyptic humanity, the artificial god's most dangerous and powerful consultants of its reign of terror. The only loses on his record had been coming against John Connor and his merry band that followed him. Yet somehow he had fallen so far that now his only advisory was the five year old that Connor's _Ballerina_ used to drag around on her tit before the world ended. He wouldn't let himself fall away to obscurity in the minor leagues.

With a new fire in his eyes, the Thugee drew a bead of blood across the beautiful girl's neck. The princess screamed into the Indian's palm, her silken torso jerking toward the vigilante. It took everything for the youth not to rush at his oldest enemy. He took a shuttered breath of aggression.

"I might be out of my prime, Boy, but I'm the one with the princess." The skull faced man's musical voice was like venom that burned through skin. "The question is what is Basil of Baker Street gonna do about it … if he can?" He taunted the youth, slowly backing away.

All the elements of the situation was about to collide. Behind the painted villain were the moving dark figures of a new column of shiny killing machines marching in step toward them from at the end of the ancient street. While in the distance the approaching rotary noise of a helicopter began to sound in the distance. But most importantly there was the echo of jet engines just breaking over the horizon.

Pursing the retreating Gray, the vigilante looked down at the mad, Thugee, scientist's hypnotic staff and his eye lit with a plan. He took an aggressive step forward, causing the Indian man to push the girl against his chest and push the jagged bottle harder to her throat.

"Hey …" He motioned for the princess to look him straight in the eye. He paused in hesitation as the priest seemed interested in whatever he was going to say. "Look at me …" He said calmly to the girl again. "It's alright … it's gonna be fine, trust me." He comforted the frightened, flustered, and confused girl. He betrayed a moment of sympathy and humanity to her as they locked eyes. They stared at one another as if they were the only two people on the street, in the city, and in the universe. And somewhere in the isolation he willed the strength from himself to her, clearing her terrified mind.

"Quand je vous dis ... Je veux vous fermez les yeux et les couvrir avec vos deux mains." Suddenly the man spoke to her in French. The girl gave the slightest of nods in understanding. Meanwhile, her captor seemed completely lost and suspicious of what was going on.

"What are you two on about?!" He snarled in paranoia.

"Prêt?" The vigilante asked suddenly lowering his goggles over his eyes. The girl rolled a tear but gave a curt motion of her head.

"Don't try anything, Mouse Detective … she is John Henry's now." The Thugee threatened as the youth pressed a button on the goggles. Suddenly the blue tinted lens polarized into complete, impenetrable, blackness. He pointed the mad scientist's own broken staff at him. The Thugee looked at the blood soaked shards of the broken crystal, the buzzing crackle of the wires, and fluxing blue lighting that was essential to the mind suggestion. He stared into the broken weapon and chuckled at the young man.

"You can't be serious? You're gonna use my own inventions against me? Even if you hadn't broken it, you don't think I've taken pains to be immune to my own algorithm?" He asked with an amused voice that was dripping with condensation. "What, is this open mic night at amateur hour, _Jasusi_?" He scoffed with a dry laugh of mirth at the two teenagers.

"Now!" He exclaimed.

Quickly the princess threw her arms up and covered her eyes. The startled Gray turned to find that his advisory had turned the dial to full power on the rod. The range of the instrument at full power could light an entire room in a blinding pattern of flashes that could convert or even scramble the delta waves of a brain pattern. It was concentrated but focused when contained by the crystal casing. But when broken, there was no pattern or battery of suggestive color palates to freeze and numb the mind. It was nothing but an unadulterated flash of powerful light that shot out of the staff at high energy. All of which the Thugee stared straight into.

The powerful beam of light only lasted a few seconds, but when the weapon finally burned out, steam came sizzling from the scientist's eyelids. Both of the skull faced man's eyes were now pupilless, white as a pair of marbles, while rows of burns and ugly welts ringed his eye lids. Pained, blinded, and in shock, the Thugee let loose a blood curling scream that echoed through the empty streets and the princess's nightmares for the rest of her life.

Eyes still shut, the girl pulled the now tormented villain's beer bottle wielding arm away from her. She leapt to the cobble stone sidewalk, as the vigilante flew in. With one heavy, unbridled swing of the staff, he turned the screaming man's head with a single blow. Suddenly silent, the Thugee hit the asphalt as limp as a board and remained there in a heap.

Overhead the rotary blades of the chopper began to echo louder in the hollow emptiness of the abandoned district. While at the other side of the street, the advancing formation of T-600 machines came closer and closer, their metal feet clanking in rhythmic step on the old cobble. All of these things thundered in the young man's mind as rushed to the fallen girl. She was wide eyed and afraid when he touched her. With a squeal she tried to escape in her panic.

"No … it's alright, it's me … it's me!" He called to her lifting his goggles again. When he had a grip on her, he lifted her back onto her feet and into his arms. There they instinctively held onto one another for dear life. She sobbed into his shoulder as he stroked her long glossy curls. She couldn't take much more of this, the monsters, the danger, the bleakness. She was lost and withering in a world of darkness and pain and she just wanted it all to stop. So she clang to what she could and that was the only person who had come for her, the only one who had fought off the monsters when she had no will or knowledge of how to do so herself.

"It's alright, look, it's just me." He moved back, steadying her with his hands on her curvy silken hips. Tear stung eyes looked into the very soul of the man behind the headscarf. For a moment their lips almost touched in a spur of the moment and flurry of raw emotions that connected two teenagers together under a life and death stress.

She suddenly frowned breaking the suddenly romantic spell they were under. "How did you know I spoke French?" She asked reaching for his bandit scarf. He caught her curiously demanding hand.

He looked over shoulder at the dozens of red eyes approaching them from behind her. "Not now … Not yet." he turned and looked to the silhouette of the Huey just on the horizon.

" _Ghost Rider 2-0, this is Halo 4, ETA forty seconds_ … _we got one shot at this, so don't you miss, goddamn it!"_

"Haven't yet …"

She watched the vigilante reach into his blue long sleeve shirt and suddenly pull out a silver pocket watch that was on a tarnished chain around his neck. The body of the watch looked old and beaten. She stared at the strange talisman she did not know the use for as the young man pulled off the goggles from his head. She flinched as he suddenly placed them on her, snapping them right over her eyes.

Suddenly her world went blue. She gasped as graphics began to leap out at her. A facial recognition scanner tried to identify her hero, but it alerted her that the identity was unknown because the obscurity of the head scarf. Her gaze fell to her hand, where the scanner picked up her finger prints. A litany of names went scrolling by before big red letters informed her that she was not in the database. Looking around, she was informed of what part of the French Quarter she was in by map circa 2014 Google, based on the old vine covered signs. When she turned behind her the lens focused and magnified three times to bring the machines into clarity. Suddenly a poly frame schematic of a T-600 appeared over her right eye, labeling weaknesses in the endoskeleton. On her left, the HUD warned her of at least thirty-two of these rubber skinned killers. She was dumbfounded by all the things she didn't know being thrown literally at her face. But she was captured by the idea that all the time that her rescuer was wearing these goggles he was seeing and knowing everything.

He turned her head back to him and handed her the Thugee's staff. "Whatever happens, don't let go and don't look down. Just focus on this." He pointed to the silver pocket watch dangling on his chest. The lens scanned the item and informed her through wire frame blueprints that it was in fact not a watch, but an old detonation device of some kind.

Hearing his warning the girl immediately backed away. "Wait, what do you mean?!" She asked timidly. Looking ahead she saw the flying machine from earlier. The lens informed her of the make and model of the helicopter and that it was flown by someone named Colonel Blair Williams. She shrank further from it and the loud whirling noise it was making on approach.

He moved to stop her. "Hey!" He caught her arm. "After all we've been through …" He held his hand out to her once again. "Do you trust me?" He asked seriously. There was a long pause between the two as she looked into his eyes. Flashes of everything that had happened in the last five minutes rushed through her mind.

She ripped her arm out of his grip. "Are you touched?! Of course I don't!" She snapped at him rebuffing his offered hand once more. "I don't know your name! You won't even show me your face!" She chastised with regal entitlement. The young man's shoulder slumped as he gave a long tired sigh.

"Well … you're really gonna hate this next part."

She gave a shout of protest when he grabbed her back and pulled against him tightly. With the other hand, he pulled out a sleek looking gun from his back hip. Touching the trigger the spearheaded point sitting in the barrel opened into a grapple hook. As the helicopter passed, she saw that there was a long, black, wrought iron, pole that had two rebar hooks at the ends. Both sides of the hook pole were sticking out from one door to the other of the Huey.

CUFF!

Just as the sound of plasma rifles began to charge up, the vigilante fired his gun at the passing chopper. The silver tipped grapple sprang into the air by gaseous chemical reaction. The hook was tailed by metallic wiring, where it snagged and coiled around the hook of the poll. The black haired teen didn't even have time to scream before she felt herself being ripped from the earth and into the air.

Wrapping her arms hard around the vigilante's neck, she watched in terror as bolts of light were fired by the mechanical legions where they had been just standing, scorching the stones black. The trail of violet and blue light arced up after them as they dangled dangerously above the formation of T-600's who arched backward trying to find a clear shot to nail Resistance fighter and displaced royal. But the momentum of the Huey was too fast for the killing machines to compensate as the gunship disappeared over the ancient buildings and into the hazy orange and purple of the breaking dawn over the bayou.

Twisting and swing in the air, the girl's green eyes were bugged out behind goggled lens. She held on tightly to the young man, her hold the golden staff was so tight her knuckles were white, as the helicopter climbed and climbed out of rage of the machines fire. She stared intently at the tarnished silver watch on the young hero's chest, knowing that if she looked down she might lose all consciousness. She knew instinctively just how far off the ground they were with nothing but a cable keeping them from falling to their deaths hundreds of yards above the ground.

Slowly she began to notice that while the Huey was leveled out they were starting to climb. With a zipping noise the metallic cable began to retract, pulling them toward the open doors of the chopper. As they got closer she began to notice that there were people inside the flying machine. Adorn in green jumpsuits and helmets, they began pull in the iron pole as the two teenagers got closer. A woman took the golden rod from the girl's grip, tossing it inside, before she held a leather gloved hand out to the princess as her feet touched the landing skid. Gripping the silver pocket watch around the young man's neck as just something to hold onto, she took the helmeted woman's hand. There she was almost rudely pulled and tossed inside. She hit the deck with a bang on her hands and knees. Never before had she ever felt more grateful to feel something solid under her feet than at that moment.

Suddenly a willing figure flopped unceremoniously next to her. "Oh, but you took her hand didn't yea!" The young man shouted at her sarcastically over the helicopter blades. She glared at him as he thumped his head down and lay flatly against her shoulder and hip. She could tell from looking at him that he was completely exhausted and all of his energy had been spent. As his chest heaved in windedness the girl could only drop her head on top of it in some earned familiarity and need to feel something soft. She felt a gauntleted hand rub her long glossy black curls as both rested and reflected on the last six minutes of their lives that almost came to an end.

From the cockpit another woman stuck her head back to look at them. "You okay, you stupid son of a bitch!" Her dark almond eyes were contorted in half maternal relief and half maternal rage at the teenager.

"I'd leave that one out of the final draft of your commandment speech for my Medal of Honor ceremony, Blair!" He replied.

This didn't improve the pilot's mood. "I'm gonna fucking kill you, Robin, you know that?!" She shouted at him.

"I told you not to call me that!" He seemed to brush the threat off as not serious. But found offense in the childhood nickname he had been trying to shed since he got it. "And hey, if that's the Old Man on the other line, tell'em I got a souvenir for the trophy room!" He held up the Thugee's staff victoriously as if it was championship hardware.

To this Blair Williams cursed the day she met the young swashbuckler for all the trouble he had caused her physically and emotionally as someone who had watched a curious little boy grow into a knuckle headed daredevil. She pulled down her headset with contemptuous relief.

"General, I regret to inform you that your only child is alive, unscathed, and hasn't learned a damn thing! But he's happy to inform you that he did get you a t-shirt!"

Suddenly there was a thunderous scream of engines that popped the princess's ears as it zoomed by. Pulling off the goggles from her head, she crawled behind the door gunner. She watched as faster and sleeker flying machines speed past the chopper, diving on the ivy ruins. From the distance they looked like gnats buzzing around a dead carcass. Her vision soon came alight with large towering explosions that spit fire and smoke high into the air as bolts of light arced into the air. The strike fighters made attack runs on the oldest part of an ancient city of tragedy, ghosts, and supernatural figures brought on slave ships from far off lands. Their legacy lost in one last final battle over the city of the dead.

The girl's eyes widened in fear, terror, and a deep existential sense of sorrow of what she saw. She had never seen the face of war. She had heard of the gallant charge of armored knight on the field of battle in their shining armor and righteous lances. But watching the whole sale leveling of entire city with weapons of such destruction was beyond her own understanding of a world centuries after her tomb would've been lost to history. She had but a taste of the daily struggle of the people of this world chased by metal monsters and those of flesh manufactured by a vengeful artificial god filled with such hatred. And somehow she knew that in any century, in any timeline, this was what war truly was. And as the flames and explosions continued to concuss over the miles they flew, she'd weep for every soul ever lost to conflict whither fruitless or righteous.

Feeling something cold in her hand she looked down a single tear falling from her eye. The droplet fell on the silver watch that her young rescuer wore around his neck. She knew she must have tugged it unclasped as she was pulled inside the flying machine. She ran a hand over the silver body that had dents beaten over the cover. Pushing the dial she was surprised that it opened.

Inside was not a clock, but a scored and aged control panel that had one solid red button on it. In the outline there had used to be three, the large red one and two smaller black ones. But time and rough fights had seen both black buttons break off. The red one was pressed in and stuck there, broken and useless now for whatever task it had been made for.

Above the control panel a photograph had been cut to fit inside the round cover. Inside was a photograph of a family. They sat on the hood of an old sleek black Mustang that was surrounded by pine trees. The young man was in his early twenties. He wore old jeans, black combat boots, and a brown double breasted coat of beaten leather. His hair was messily styled, a lock hanging limply on his forehead. There was something haunted and hardened in his emerald eyes that seemed even as he smiled somewhat inhuman. His large arm was placed lovingly around an impossibly beautiful girl. She looked no older than seventeen, and yet there was something ageless about this ballerina that suggested she was older than she looked. The beauty had long tresses of glossy chocolate ringlets, and emotionless golden eyes that seemed to portray nothing. She wore a purple leather motorcycle jacket over a white linen dress that was held up by a polished black belt. Her slender legs of perfection were clad in leather knee high boots. Unlike the youth she folded herself into, all that could be said for the teenage girl's smile was that there was just a flicker of some jovial amusement buried in her blank face. Sitting on the girl's lap was a very small boy. Big innocent emerald eyes matched those of the young man's as was there a resemblance of a similar face from what could be seen from his little mop of loose black curls. Dressed in a thin pullover hoody and jeans, there was a content grin on the boy's face, snuggled into the ballerina's grip, squished between the couple. They all looked so happy that day. They were the two star-crossed lovers and their impossible child.

She ran a thumb over the picture of the little boy, her eyes narrowing in recognition of the lips and the chin. But before she could study the picture further, someone snatched the item out of her hands. She looked up to the vigilante who closed the watch and clasped the chain together again. She watched him loop it around his neck once more. She could tell that the item was precious and sacred to him. Something handed down that carried a great significance to the young and happy family. She dipped her head in apology, lifting her eyes she watched him hide it away again in his shirt.

There was a long pause as she looked out once more at the firebombing and light show of nightmares. "How did you know I spoke French?" She suddenly asked. She seemed lost in the destruction, recalling the violence that had surrounded her since she came to this place.

The young man grunted while looking her over. "English accent, silk dress, middle ages … probably a lady of high birth. Figured it's the first thing they taught you … because it sure as hell wasn't self-defense." He rotated his lower jaw and raised his eyebrows.

She glared with a tilt of her head. "I don't know what that weapon he carried was … but I know he surely would've used it on you had I not hit him in the head with that cobble." She tilted her head back with pure attitude in her voice and a nod as she spoke.

She expected him to swat back at her. But instead he gave a ruffle smirk of mischief and leaned back against the sliding door. "Touché" He chuckled to himself with an already found reverie of the fight.

There was a small but sad smile on her lips as she turned back to the shrinking city ablaze. "So this is your life, in this place …?" She asked knowing the unspoken. This place of death and suffering was now her world as well. Even if she could go back what was waiting for her? Her family was dead, her betrothed would move on, and she could never forget what was taken from her and what she saw in those disappearing ruins. She was tainted and ruined forever, never to be the same girl they had all loved.

When she looked up she found that her peer hadn't taken his eyes off her. There was something sympathetic and captured in his gaze. He studied her for a measured moment and smirked softly. "It's not all bad." He replied. "Sometimes it just depends on the door you look through." He motioned his head behind her. Turning from her kneeling position she looked at the other open port on the Huey. She gave the young man a double take of suspicion before she crawled to look out at the unmanned side of the attack transport.

Out the open window was a vast submerged forest that stretched out to a large open body of water that moved and rippled in serenity. Just above the peaceful waterline violet and orange clouds were breaking to reveal the fiery sun rising. Its purifying light reached from the heavens to touch the sloshing water below. And for a second the princess thought the entire bayou was made of diamonds as it winked and sparkled in her green eyes as the darkness receded from inside and out. She wasn't sure if she would ever see anything as beautiful in her entire life as what she saw in her moment of hopelessness in this new world she was trapped in.

When she finally tore herself away from the sights and sounds of hope, she looked back at her companion. Though he had the same expression on his face, he wasn't looking at the scenery, nor marveling nature. His eyes hadn't left her. He had been from that first moment enraptured. Only in the soft glow of morning, as the dawn glimmered off her glossy hair, and the rays of first light illuminated her pale face, did he know with absolute certainty, that there was something more to destiny's designs from the moment they had first met.

Slowly the young man reached up and removed his headscarf. Grown out, sweaty raven curls fell free. With a hand he pushed them back away from sharp emerald eyes to reveal classically handsome face. The girl was taken aback by seeing him for the first time. Her heart contracted, her stomach flipped, and she was completely drawn to the young man. For all their time together she felt if she had only half answers to an unknown question of the heart. But upon gazing on his true form for the first time, it was as if the great puzzled was now complete. The answer to the most fundamental question was finally shown to her.

There are very few in the entirety of time that know with absolute certainty that they were born in the wrong era. That heart, mind, and soul belong elsewhere in another time and place. But when the Tech-Com Commando and the Arthurian princess, lost in time, gazes met in the light of the new day once again, they knew that it wasn't being born in the wrong time and place … it was being separated by years, decades, and centuries from the yearning of another soul trying to find it's other half within the temporal ocean currents. Most will never find one another. Some lucky enough to be chosen by destiny only have days. One such rare pair of impossible lovers, man and machine, were blessed with years together. But most of these doomed wanderers have only a split second while glancing at old pictures and portraits in museums.

Removing a gauntlet from his left hand, the young man offered it to the girl one last time. She looked down at the tanned and calloused hand, noticing a scar on the top and several off angled fingers from a history of breaks. But this time she didn't rebuff or disdain from it. She reached out and took it as if it was her own, as if it was always meant to be.

"Ryan Connor."

"Lady Jocelyn Gray."

From that moment of touching hands both young lovers experienced all of the longing, suffering, exhilaration, and love of centuries of waiting for one another in a glance and brush of skin. In it would last forever within a few beats of time as dawn broke over a sparkling sea on a diamond shore.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 _Probably not anyone's favorite story and I'm sure I've written better. But this was a lot of fun to write either way._

 _A little bit of everything I love is in this. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Bruce Timm, and Frank Miller. Netflix's Daredevil inspired the Ryan's outfit. The whole Indiana Jones franchise, especially the episode "London 1916" of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in particular, and the Bruce Timm "Batman 75" animated short were heavy influences on this one-shot._

 _Katie McGrath was the character model for Jocelyn, based on the fact that I was mainlining the first two seasons of "Merlin" while this was in development. Also the track "Celtic Love" by Joel Mcneely from Young Indiana Jones really helped developing and writing the compressed love story between Ryan and Jocelyn._

 _If you're interested in these characters going forward, this is the lead in to the Chapter of "Poet and the Muse" titled "The Science of Deduction: The Unquiet Grave". But I recommend reading "The Hanging Tree" first, just because the John and Cameron story is kinda important overall. But if you're not interested in how they got together and just want to see them together … go about it your own way._

 _Read, Review, and have a Happy Halloween!_


End file.
